[Illustration:  A Vassal doing Homage to his Lord]

In the second place, it must be noted that the king was not the direct master of all the people.  Only the great lords had sworn homage to him.  He was lord of the dukes, earls, and barons.  The less important barons swore homage to the great barons, and the knights, squires, retainers, and yeomen swore homage to the lesser barons.  If a lesser baron had subdivided his fief among certain knights and squires, the peasants owed allegiance, not to him, but to the squire to whom they had been assigned.  Thus, if a “man” rebelled against his lord, all of his knights, retainers, etc., must rebel also.  If, for instance, a great duke refused to obey his king and broke his oath of allegiance, all his little barons and knights must turn disloyal too, or rather, must remain loyal, for their oaths had been taken to support the duke, and not the king.  History is full of such cases.  In many instances, dukes became so powerful that they were able to make war on even terms with kings.  The great Dukes of Burgundy for a time kept the kings of France in awe of their power; the Duke of Northumberland in 1403 raised an army that almost overthrew King Henry Fourth of England; the Duke of York, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from the throne of England and became king in his place.

[Illustration:  William the Conqueror]

A strange case arose when, in 1066, William, who as duke of Normandy had sworn homage to the king of France, became, through conquest, king of England.  His sons, great-grandsons, and great-great-grandsons continued for one hundred and fifty years to be obliged to swear allegiance to the French kings in order to keep the duchy of Normandy.  It was as if the Governor of Texas had led an army into Mexico, conquered it, and become Emperor of that country, without resigning his governorship or giving up his American citizenship.

Two things which tended to break down the feudal system and bring more power to the common people were, first, the invention of gunpowder, and, second, the rise of towns.  A man with a musket could bring down a knight in armor as easily as he could the most poorly armored peasant.  Kings, in fighting to control their great lords, gave more freedom to citizens of towns in return for their help.  The king’s armies came to be recruited largely from townspeople, who were made correspondingly free from the feudal lords.

The rule of the feudal system, that each man owed a certain amount of military service to his ruler has lasted to the present day and is responsible for much of the misery that now exists.  Kings went to war with each other simply to increase their territories.  The more land a king had under his control, the more people who owed him taxes, and the greater number he could get into his army, the greater became his ambition to spread his kingdom still farther.

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